Over the last few months, they have been radically rethinking the way they produce video ads. Besides adjusting to the soundless environment, they’re also figuring out ways to grab people’s attention much faster in social and mobile feed based environments — an imperative in the digital world where consumers can easily scroll past content with a flick of a finger.

“We talk about this all the time,” said Mike Haynes, global digital marketing manager at Ben & Jerry’s. “Over the last six months it’s picked up.”

Mr. Hayes said his company has begun producing video ads that aim to communicate just as well without sound, such as a recent set of ads featuring close ups of ice cream brands accompanied by on screen text, as well as a video featuring a pint of ice cream trapped in a slowly melting block of ice.

Ron Amram, senior media director, marketing, Heineken USA, said executives at top digital media companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all consulting brands on this new reality, and why ” you need to focus on that first three seconds” of a video ad, he said.

That means adopting very different creative strategies compared to those employed in classic 30-second TV commercials, which are shot assuming most viewers are watching a full screen experience with the sound turned up.

But in feed environments on mobile phones, “you’ve got someone scrolling over the thing, and you’ve got to grab him by the throat quickly,” said Adam Wohl, executive creative director at the agency mcgarrybowen. “On TV, you can let things play out.”

To that point SapientNitro Worldwide Chief Creative officer Gaston Legorburu said he’s been holding classes for his agency’s creative executives that focus on this new sound-off reality. That’s a reality that is not always easy for classically trained creative executives to embrace.

“Things like the delayed product reveal, the slow ad payoff, that stuff just doesn’t’ work anymore,” he said. “Now you have to think, how do you make this unskippable, which is really hard to do.”

Sound at the start of TV ads is often a crucial signal for a spot’s tone, said Lincoln Bjorkman, global chief creative officer at Wunderman. “I used to be able to play that “Jaws” music for you at the start of an ad and tell you to be scared,” he said.

Now brands need new tactics. One new rule of thumb Heineken has learned: if you have a celebrity, show them right away. That’s something the beer brand has used to great effect with stars like Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Stewart–faces that should stick out in news feeds–but faces you may save for a few seconds in a TV ad to keep the element of surprise.

“It almost feels like they reversed the order of how you shoot ads for video,” said Mr. Amram.

Mark D’Arcy, chief creative officer of Facebook’s Creative Shop, generally agrees. “If you have LeBron in your ad, don’t wait until 34 seconds to show him.” Facebook has been actively counseling brands how best to advertise using Web video without sound.

“We are definitely moving away from disruption to discovery in video ads,” he said. “The burden of interest is on the creator.”

But with that burden comes great freedom and possibility, Mr. D’Arcy says. Video ads on Facebook can run much longer than 30-seconds. And autoplay video carries unique creative possibilities, he added, citing “cinemegraph ads” that resemble those newspapers from the “Harry Potter” movies to a recent campaigns from Burberry and other marketers that features still images that incorporated subtle motion.

“That’s a really beautiful thing that autoplay enables,” he said.

And it’s not just Facebook. Autoplay ads are said to be coming to Twitter. Many people regularly consume Snapchat videos without sound. And of course, lots more Web publishers are automatically streaming videos without sound.

Mr. Amram thinks that media companies are actually ahead of brands on this revolution. In fact, BuzzFeed mentioned how the lack of sound is influencing how it produces both video content and ads at its recent NewFront sales event in New York.

According to Ze Frank, president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, the company has built out a group focused on developing “post literate” video content, centered on motion and visuals, particularly well suited for international audiences.

“In linear, interruptive world, you borrow from aesthetics around you, which is why TV ads are like mini movies, min sitcoms,” he said. “In social streams, that adjacency doesn’t exist, so the old tactics could be quite jarring. You need different types of strategies.”

That doesn’t mean that such strategies shouldn’t disregard sound altogether. Some brands, like Capital One, are trying to prompt consumers to turn their sound on, including a recent video featuring actress Jennifer Garner knocking on a person’s screen, causing a volume graphic to appear.

“If i do my job right. they’ll turn it up and listen,” said Mr. Bjorkman.